At his concert in Newark, New Jersey a week ago Sunday, Eddie Vedder revealed one of the subjects of his current single, "Brother the Cloud."
Vedder told the crowd that the song is actually about few people he knew who died, "in ways that we wish could've been avoided" -- one of them, a Sandy Hook dad named Jeremy Richman.
Richman lost his daughter, Avielle, in the 2012 Newtown, Connecticut school shooting that left 26 dead, and later started The Avielle Foundation in her name.
According to Vedder, "He tried to be positive about it, he'd go around and speak and do some seminars and conferences, etc. We became really close, I reckon, over about three years. We talked in November and he was gonna come visit in January or maybe early February."
It didn't happen. And in March, Richman died of an apparent suicide.
Vedder ended by saying that he "wouldn't dare to question" Richman's motives. He also wishes he "could've done more to save him" and that Richman would've known that Eddie "was on the other side ever-so-close, just days away."
There's fan-shot video of a three-song segment of Vedder's February 6th show on YouTube. You can listen to Vedder's intro to "Brother the Cloud" at 11:30 in the clip.